Law, politics, and rock & rollLaw, politics, and rock & roll - LiveJournal.comThe Partisan Brain- July 31, 2006 How the Brain Helps Partisans Admit No Gray By Shankar VedantamWashington Post Staff WriterMonday, July 31, 2006; A02 President Bush came to Washington promising to be a uniter, but public opinion polls show that apart from a burst of camaraderie after Sept. 11, 2001, America is more bitterly divided and partisan than ever. We'll leave the pundits to pontificate on the politics, and instead explore a more interesting phenomenon: People who see the world in black and white rarely seem to take in.http://atticus-rex.livejournal.com/266605.html Asylum law makes the NYT- July 31, 2006 For all that immigration law and policy has been center stage this year, no one's been talking about asylum much.This study comes as absolutely no surprise to me.Study Finds Disparities in Judges Asylum Rulings By RACHEL L. SWARNS WASHINGTON, July 30 An examination of thousands of immigration cases has found wide disparities in the rate at which judges grant asylum to people seeking haven in the United States, according to a study released Sunday by a private research group. One judge in...http://atticus-rex.livejournal.com/266354.html (Untitled)- July 31, 2006 Passing Down the Legacy of ConservatismOh, it's boot camp for the next generation of Hasterts and Santorums.As you might expect, even this slavish piece makes it sound arrogant and elitist, with the poor put-upon denizens of the Right once again acting like they're under attack from all sides. The brainwashed students that attend these things--their poster child is a 19-year-old, home-schooled, on-her-way-to-evangelical-Wheaton-College-this-fall drama queen who signed on because she is...http://atticus-rex.livejournal.com/266073.html (Untitled)- July 25, 2006 Lieberman calls in a marker from the Big Dog.I read this as a nice bit of nostalgia, and little more, I'm afraid. So Bill worked on Joe's first campaign in 1970. Doesn't mean I suddenly feel like I can trust Lieberman. Thankfully, I guess, he's not running in my state. (Meta note: maybe that means that y'all should just disregard anything that comes out of my ranty little mouth about Lieberman.)Question: The article says that most CT Dems are behind Joe...http://atticus-rex.livejournal.com/265959.html Signing statements report is out- July 24, 2006 The ABA's Task Force on Presidential Signing Statements has issued its final report.Fairly stinging rebuke, I think. 32 pages of history, analysis, and sound debunking of the Bushies' claims with regard to the use and abuse of signing statements.Bottom line, Dubya:It may well seem burdensome or frustrating to a President to be so confined in his response to the legislative enactments of the Congress. The Supreme Court has acknowledged that the choices . . .made in the Constitutional Convention..http://atticus-rex.livejournal.com/265706.html And another- July 16, 2006 An American Foreign Policy That Both Realists and Idealists Should Fall in Love With By ROBERT WRIGHT Princeton, N.J. As liberals try to articulate a post-Bush foreign policy, some are feeling a bit of cognitive dissonance. They have always thought of themselves as idealistic, concerned with the welfare of humankind. Not for them the ruthlessly narrow focus on national self-interest of the realist foreign policy school. That schools most famous practitioner, Henry Kissinger, is for many...http://atticus-rex.livejournal.com/265360.html Big NYT op-ed this morning- July 16, 2006 The Real Agenda It is only now, nearly five years after Sept. 11, that the full picture of the Bush administrations response to the terror attacks is becoming clear. Much of it, we can see now, had far less to do with fighting Osama bin Laden than with expanding presidential power. Over and over again, the same pattern emerges: Given a choice between following the rules or carving out some unprecedented executive power, the White House always shrugged off the legal constraints. Even when the.http://atticus-rex.livejournal.com/265005.html Minimum wage gets press today- July 13, 2006 First, an NYT story on how Dems have linked their political fortunes in the midterms to the minimum wage issue in several key states (PA, OH, AZ, etc.).The issue, as we're finally getting around to phrasing it, is many Dems say they will vote to block any raise in Congressional pay until the minimum wgae is increased (Congress has denied an increase for eight straight years while their own pay goes up de rigeur every year). The NYT has an op-ed with more details.http://atticus-rex.livejournal.com/264959.html Soft bigotry of low expectations - from today's Progress Report- July 12, 2006 ECONOMY -- BUSH CELEBRATES THE FOURTH LARGEST DEFICIT IN HISTORY: Yesterday, the Office of Management Budget projected a $296 billion federal deficit for fiscal year 2006. President Bush held a press conference arguing that this announcement is a vindication of his economic policies: "The projected budget deficit over -- of over $420 billion is now assumed to be $296 billion. See, what happens is when you grow the economy by cutting taxes, more tax revenues come into the Treasury, and that's...http://atticus-rex.livejournal.com/264481.html (Untitled)- July 10, 2006 Hoekstra: "The administration didn't tell Congress about an intelligence program until a whistleblower turned me onto it and I demanded a briefing." Punch line: He's not talking about NSA wiretapping or the T-Dept's bank job.So what the fuck is he talking about And how worried should civil libertarians be todayMeanwhile, Dubya is discovering the limitations, and frustrations, of his preemption doctrine:Administration officials still defend that decision to invade Iraq, saying that Saddam...http://atticus-rex.livejournal.com/263975.html |